This invention relates in general to the field of telecommunications, and more particularly to a system and method for identifying an unidentified person using an ambiguity-resolution criterion.
Many people, organizations, and commercial and other establishments may identify callers, customers, and other persons for security, billing, record keeping, or other purposes. For example, a customer service representative for a mail order sales organization might identify a caller to verify the caller""s authority to receive information concerning an order placed with the organization. A called party in a business, organizational, home, or other setting might elect to accept a call, disconnect a call, or route a call to another person or processing device according to the identity of the caller. A clerk for a commercial or other establishment might identify a customer at the point of sale to allow an informed decision to be made regarding whether to provide goods, services, or other benefits to the customer.
As identification and identity verification procedures become more advanced to serve various needs, these people, organizations, and establishments may identify callers, customers or other persons using a variety of techniques. A known technique for identifying a caller receives a telephone number associated with an incoming call and compares the number with previously stored information to identify the caller associated with the incoming call. These techniques may be unsatisfactory if the caller is calling from a telephone, extension, or location having a telephone number that is different than the number for which there is previously stored information. Other techniques may even compare a spoken word or phrase identifying the caller with a stored voice print to verify an identification made as result of personal interaction with the caller or through digit or voice recognition of a personal identification number (PIN), account number, or other identifier. These and other techniques requiring personal interaction with callers to generate information for comparison with stored identification information are often relatively inefficient and costly.
A known technique for identifying a customer includes receiving a PIN or account number to identify the customer, either verbally or using a magnetic card reader, and then comparing the number with previously stored information to verify the availability to the customer of a good, service, or other benefit. Such techniques are wholly inadequate if the customer loses his card or has it stolen, cannot remember his number or identifier, or is otherwise unable to provide the requisite information. Furthermore, such techniques are burdensome to both the customer and the establishment in that the customer must remember the number or identifier, or carry with him the appropriate card, and the establishment must devote employee resources to the identity verification process.
Although possibly acceptable to verify the identity of an identified caller, customer, or other person, the above techniques do not identify an unidentified person out of a universe of known persons. These and other disadvantages make previous techniques for identifying persons inadequate for many applications.
The present invention addresses disadvantages and problems associated with previous systems and methods for identifying persons.
According to one embodiment of the present invention, a system for identifying an unidentified person includes a database that contains utterance data and an ambiguity-resolution criterion corresponding to a known person. A processing system is coupled to the database and receives utterance information and at least one ambiguity-resolution identifier corresponding to the unidentified person. The processing system compares the utterance information with the utterance data to identify the unidentified person as at least one known person. If the processing system ambiguously identifies the unidentified person as more than one known person, the ambiguity-resolution identifier is compared with the ambiguity-resolution criterion in order to identify the unidentified person as a particular known person. The processing system may automatically retrieve stored information corresponding to the known customer in response to the identification.
The present invention provides a system and method for identifying an unidentified person that does not merely verify the identity of the person, but identifies the unidentified person from among a universe of known persons while resolving any ambiguities in that identification. Although the present invention identifies the unidentified person irrespective of the location, switching system, trunk line, or telephone number from which the person may be calling, the present invention uses such information as one or more ambiguity-resolution criteria when appropriate to resolve an ambiguous identification of the person as two or more known persons. The present invention may therefore increase the efficiency and accuracy of the identification process. Other ambiguity-resolution criteria, for example, store identifiers, historical purchasing information, and other suitable criteria, may be similarly employed.
In a commercial setting, the system and method of the present invention identifies an unidentified person at the point of sale, using appropriate criteria to resolve ambiguous identifications, without requiring the person to remember a PIN, account number, or other identifier, or to physically provide a card containing this information in magnetic form. Furthermore, the present invention may be self-learning, such that the likelihood of identifying a particular unidentified person increases each time the person interacts with the system. Moreover, the present invention may automatically provide stored information concerning a known person in response to the system identifying the unidentified person as the known person, which further increases the efficiency of the interaction with the person.